College affordable? Let's see ...

Websites soon must have a net price calculator

SCOTT WALDMAN Staff write, Times Union

By SCOTT WALDMAN Staff writer

Published 12:01 am, Friday, October 14, 2011

University at Albany, shown here, will be among the colleges and universities across the nation that must post a net price calculator on their websites to help families determine college affordability. (Skip Dickstein / TImes Union)

University at Albany, shown here, will be among the colleges and...

University at Albany, shown here, will be among the colleges and universities across the nation that must post a net price calculator on their websites to help families determine college affordability. (Skip Dickstein/Times Union)

University at Albany, shown here, will be among the colleges and...

University at Albany, shown here, will be among the colleges and universities across the nation that must post a net price calculator on their websites to help families determine college affordability. (Skip Dickstein / TImes Union)

TROY -- It's a tense time of year if you're about to send a child to college.

High school seniors are in the middle of their college application process and the bills that people start dreading the moment their child is born will soon come due. However, a new federal law should ease some parental anxiety by requiring schools to be more transparent about just how much a higher education will cost.

By Oct. 29, colleges and universities will be required to have a net price calculator on their websites as part of The Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008. Parents and students can enter tax and income information and find out the true price tag of a school. The calculator is intended to give them an idea of a possible financial aid package and the cost of a school after fees and living expenses are added.

"A lot of colleges say they're affordable and, using this tool, now you can find out if they are," said Dan Lundquist, vice president for marketing and enrollment management at The Sage Colleges. "It's encouraging families to get beyond this tool and look at the cost to them."

Some schools, including Sage, already have financial aid calculators posted. Lundquist said they can be helpful for marketing a college with a high ticket price because they show parents just how much financial aid is available. Though tuition and room and board at Sage can cost $38,000, two-thirds of students pay the same amount that they would to attend a public four-year school, according to Lundquist. He said the calculator will dispel the myth that private colleges are unaffordable.

Still, a number of experts are skeptical that the calculators will reveal the actual cost of a college education. The calculators already have a number of problems and can be easily misused, said Mark Kantrowitz, one of the nation's foremost college financial aid experts and publisher of Fastweb.com and FinAid.org. For instance, he said public schools base the dollar amounts used in their calculators on the price of in-state tuition, which makes them meaningless for students who live out of state. That flaw alone would make the cost seem like it was $11,000 lower than it actually will be for out-of-state students.

"They're a ballpark estimate, they'll tell you if you're inside the ballpark," he said. "They won't tell you the difference between first place and center field."

Kantrowitz said creating a calculator could show colleges how difficult it is to use their financial aid forms. He expects schools to simplify the aid process as a residual effect of the federal mandate.

The Institute for College Access & Success, a nonprofit that works to make higher education more affordable, hailed the calculator as a useful tool, if used properly. But the group cautioned that some calculators ask as many as 50 questions, require extensive financial information and are so hard to use that they will be of little use to the consumer. Some calculators are buried on obscure parts of school websites and are hard to find, unless one performs Internet search including the name of a school and the word "calculator." Other calculators deceive users by subtracting loans from the "net price" to create an artificial cost figure as low as zero, which is inaccurate since the loans will have to be repaid.

The calculator on the Skidmore College website has already been used by 200 families since it was unveiled less than two months ago, said Mary Lou Bates, dean of admissions and financial aid. She said parents are already talking about it during school visits and expects use to increase dramatically since more than 20,000 potential applicants inquire about Skidmore every year.

She said the calculator will show users that even though Skidmore costs $54,000 to attend, the average annual grant is $30,000. She expects it will increase interest in the school.